Introduction: The preferences of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) often remain unfulfilled since it stays challenging to decode their idiosyncratic behavior resulting in a negative impact on their quality of life (QoL). Physiological data (i.e. heart rate (variability) and motion data) might be the missing piece…

This article explores the use of Extended Reality (XR) technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) and motion capture, in mathematics instruction, specifically focusing on geometry learning. Our research highlights the challenges students face in learning geometry due to its abstract nature and the potential of XR technologies to create…

Background: People with aphasia rely on gesture more than healthy controls to get their message across, but use a limited range of gesture types. Gesture therapy is thus a potential avenue of intervention for people with aphasia. However, currently no gesture assessment evaluates how they use gesture. Such a tool could inform therapy targets and…

When young children learn to use language, they start to use their hands in co-verbal gesturing. There are, however, considerable differences between children, and it is not completely understood what these individual differences are due to. We studied how children at 4 years of age employ speech and iconic gestures to convey meaning in different…

The following article looks into the question of negative affixation in Polish Sign Language. Until today only one negative prefix and one negative suffix were recognized in Polish Sign Language. Our research investigates farther these two affixes looking into their etymologies, constraints and new examples of their use. The negative prefix…

Many studies suggest that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Although statistical learning is not necessarily implicit in nature, it is often defined as learning that happens without awareness. This article investigates whether statistical learning in young children is indeed implicit,…

Children learn words in environments where there is considerable variability, both in terms of the number of possible referents for novel words, and the availability of cues to support word-referent mappings. How caregivers adapt their gestural cues to referential uncertainty has not yet been explored. We tested a computational model of…

Echo phonology was originally proposed to account for obligatory coordination of manual and mouth articulations observed in several sign languages. However, previous research into the phenomenon lacks clear criteria for which components of movement can or must be copied when the articulators are so different. Nor is there discussion of which…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influences of facial expression and conducting gesture on perceptions of choral conductor and ensemble expressivity. College musicians (N = 156) viewed excerpts of two choral conductors who had been recorded conducting with either an expressive conducting gesture and a neutral/static face or an…

Successful lessons are explicit, yet also inspire active learning and opportunities to respond. As the one shaping lessons, can you do better? Probably, and you're not alone. Research shows teachers consistently offer students far fewer than the recommended opportunities to respond, leaving all students--including those with special needs and…

The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning has enjoyed a prominent role in guiding the development of online instruction, but recent research has proposed boundary conditions for some of its key principles. Moreno and Mayer advanced the possibility of a reverse redundancy effect when narration and fully redundant on-screen text are presented in a…

Objective: College students may not view sexual consent communication while under the influence of substances (i.e., alcohol and drugs) as problematic if media models the co-occurrence of these behaviors. The purpose of this study was to assess the types of consent cues used by characters who are and are not under the influence of substances in…

Students' difficulties interpreting diagrams remain a concern in science education. Research about improving diagram comprehension has included few studies of teachers' orchestration of language and gesture in explaining diagrams--and very few in senior high schools. Research with younger students and studies of research scientists' practice…

Human languages, signed and spoken, can be characterized by the structural patterns they use to associate communicative "forms" with "meanings." One such pattern is paradigmatic morphology, where complex words are built from the systematic use "and re-use" of sub-lexical units. Here, we provide evidence of emergent…

This study investigates teachers' gestures produced during directive actions. I examine three particular gestures--pointing to the mouth, pointing to the ear, and cupping the ear-- that teachers frequently deployed when interacting with their deaf or hard-of-hearing students in an oral preschool classroom, a setting focused on spoken language and…